First Look: Jeaniene Frost’s Up From the Grave (January 28, 2014)

Lately, life has been unnaturally calm for vampires Cat Crawfield and her husband Bones. They should have known better than to relax their guard, because a shocking revelation sends them back into action to stop an all-out war...

A rogue CIA agent is involved in horrifying secret activities that threaten to raise tensions between humans and the undead to dangerous heights. Now Cat and Bones are in a race against time to save their friends from a fate worse than death...because the more secrets they unravel, the deadlier the consequences. And if they fail, their lives—and those of everyone they hold dear— will be hovering on the edge of the grave.

Cat and Bones have been through a lot in the seven Night Huntress novels from Jeaniene Frost. Now, here we are at the final book, Up From the Grave, and readers had to wonder if they could say good-bye to these two. Hell, would we really be leaving the same characters we’ve fallen in love with?

Yes. Unequivocally yes.

This book, you guys. This book. We’ve seen so many series end on a whimper, but can you honestly see Cat and Bones doing anything half-assed? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

The beautiful thing about this series-ending novel is that it brings together everything we’ve loved about this series. Jeaniene Frost takes us down memory lane with nuance and care. Every element that’s a callback to a prior book is pivotal to the plot instead of being a “hey remember that time…” bone thrown to fans.

In other words, you get to see Marie Laveau, Mencheres, Denise, Ian, Vlad, Don, Tate, Cooper, the vampire council, and the list goes on. And every time you run into one of them it’s with purpose. Cat is consistently blunt and direct, and the plot here is treated similarly.

Her single-mindedness rings throughout the novel, as does Bones’s determination to put his wife’s wellness above everything else. He’s still every bit that rogue we met in Halfway to the Grave. He doesn’t use kid gloves when others would find them warranted, and he’s unabashedly naked on more than one occasion.

The plot of Up From the Grave is wicked and twisty and has more than one moment when you have to keep reading because you’re angry or worried or hopeful. The latter-half is edge-of-your-seat madcap pacing—the very thing we’ve come to expect from Night Huntress.

Cat being bold and standing up to government types? Check.

Bones ignoring everything in the name of what’s best for Cat? Check.

Epic battles? Check.

Sexy times? Check.

Creating vampires and ghouls? Check.

Possible supernatural war? Double check.

In other words, Up From the Grave has taken the strengths of the previous books and melded them into 350 pages of reader delight.

Learn more or pre-order a copy of Up From the Grave by Jeaniene Frost, available January 28, 2014: